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Saturday, September 17, 2011

We're in the final hours of the six-hour ALMS race here at Laguna Seca, and while the real battle is playing out between Mazda and Aston Martin in LMP1 and BMW and Corvette in the GT class, we're here to catch the west coast debut of the Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid.

The orange, white and silver 911
running around the track is version 2.0. Weight is down, efficiency is
up and in true Porsche fashion, its time on the circuit has been largely
drama-free.

This second iteration made its debut at N24, with the hybrid system
losing over 100 pounds thanks to a combination of parts consolidation
and improved internals. Last year's Hybrid had a separate cooling
system, oil pump, oil cooler and intakes to keep the system in check,
but for 2011, everything is now integrated into the standard 911 GT3 R
chassis. That means nearly all of the components found in the racer
Porsche offers to privateers can be used for the Hybrid. Not only that,
but the two 75 kW motors mounted up front and powering the front wheels
are largely off-the-shelf Carrera 4S bits, with one engineer confiding
in us that if something goes pear-shaped during the race, they could
mend the Hybrid by pulling bits off the 911 Turbo parked in front of the Motorsport trailer.

Aside from the weight reduction (2,866 pounds for 2011 versus 2,976 in
2010), including the use of a magnesium roof in place of the steel panel
and a fully integrated carbon fiber monocoque that now houses the
electric flywheel accumulator, the delivery of the electric go-juice has
been tweaked.

Last year's car required drivers to press a steering wheel-mounted
button to deliver the electrified boost to the front wheels. After
crunching the numbers, Porsche realized there was too much discrepancy
in power delivery from driver to driver (as much as 25 percent), so this
new system handles everything automatically.

Different maps are developed for each track based on everything from
ambient temperature to whether the yellow flag is out, allowing Porsche
to either maximize performance or fuel economy. The drivers seem to like
the new system, but a manual override is still available, allowing them
to get an eight-second, 200-hp boost when the need arises. Even better,
now the system can be fully charged in less than two corners worth of
hard braking and the Hybrid can run on electric power alone for one mile
– slowly.

"The largest advantage to this new system is the number of parameters we
can modify," Dieter Steinhauser, Porsche's head of motorsports R&D
told us, "but the disadvantage is the number of parameters we can
modify."

Obviously, this option overload is like oxygen to the engineers. And
even though development of the 40,000 rpm electric flywheel was
partially developed by Williams and the electric motors were
co-developed with a Swiss firm, Porsche has been fully in charge of the
program and its development. "We wanted to know how everything works and
works together," Steinhauser was quick to point out. And that's going
to be important in a few year's time.

The ACO – the governing body of LeMans – is in the early stages of
outlining the regulations for the 2014 LeMans season. Among the variety
of initiatives on the table, the major thrust is on energy regulation.
The ACO wants to reduce fuel consumption by a significant margin in 2014
and then continue to reduce it each successive year. But that's the
obvious tact. Less obvious is the ACO's desire to reduce overall energy
consumption within the race car, which means systems similar to
Porsche's hybrid setup are likely to be in the cards.

According to representatives from Porsche Motorsport, the automaker is
deeply involved in the discussions with the ACO and the body is "very
open-minded" when it comes to implementing new powertrain rules.
Further, the ACO is ready to move on from diesel as the dominant fuel at
LeMans and that means at least three or four new and different
technologies will be allowed in 2014.

But what kind of technologies? We'll be seeing soon enough. And on the
world's largest racing stage. Porsche plans to compete in the top-tier
LMP1 class in 2014, and this newest effort – Porsche's first
factory-backed team since LeMans in 1998 – is going to push the game
forward by leaps and bounds.

"We are in a very creative time at Porsche Motorsport," Steinhauser
proudly admits, and the fruits of that creativity should make for an
excellent race three years from now.